The comedy of love: A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night

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At first Shakespeare's love comedies might seem to make play upon mistaken identity, disguise and illusion. Through such means, however, he raises deeper issues, truth and seemingly, even the very nature of theatre itself. Above all, these two of his finest comedies simultaneously celebrate love.

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Whereas many of his contemporaries wrote city comedies set in contemporary London, Shakespeare’s are sophisticated comedies of love, wit, and illusion. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the earliest of his mature comedies, and Twelfth Night the last of the sequence, written at the turn of the century.

Possibly written to entertain the guests at an aristocratic wedding, A Midsummer Night’s Dream brings two pairs of lovers and group of workmen turned amateur actors to a wood at night, where both undergo transformations imposed upon them by the inhabitants of the fairy world. With the growing recognition of Shakespeare’s fascination with the work of the Latin poet Ovid, increasingly the play has come to be regarded as Shakespeare’s own Metamorphoses.

If the earlier plays seems to suggest that love is an infatuation ‘engendered in the eyes,’ or even a form of madness, Twelfth Night shows how it can be a self-absorbed melancholia. Orsino enjoying his state of unrequited love, Olivia sunk in prolonged mourning for her dead brother, both are awakened from their emotional lassitude by the disguised heroine Viola; and the comical self-love of Malvolio, the pompous steward, is punctured by an ingenious practical joke.

Although studies of the plays have frequently referred to them as the ‘festive’ or ‘happy comedies,’ criticism has occasionally found unsettling undertones in them too. In particular Twelfth Night has been called ‘Shakespeare’s chilliest comedy.’ The class will be invited to reflect where the balance lies.

Students may also find it helpful to have read Two Gentlemen of Verona, possibly Shakespeare's earliest comedy, and As You Like It, written between A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night.

Learning outcomesThe learning outcomes for this course are implicit in the course description and, for those who wish to write papers, in the essay questions which follow it. Students are expected to gain from this series of classroom sessions a greater understanding of the subject, and of the core issues and arguments central to the course.

The learning outcomes for this course specifically are:

1. The traditions of Roman and Italian Renaissance comedy which Shakespeare is following;